goals

It’s an eating and laziness problem. Here’s the thing: I love to eat a lot of food and have little to no perseverance. I also have a condition called PCOS. I honestly don’t know if that contributes to my weight gain or my weight contributes to it. Either way, I’m not doing everything I can to combat it. Also, I am fairly certain that I’m teetering on the edge of this causing other serious health problems. Before, I was just contending with it being inconvenient to go clothes shopping. Now, more physical activities are getting difficult and I’m beginning to realize that I’m not filled with boundless abilities like I was as a teenager. So this all needs to change, that much is obvious. How, though? Please don’t start in with the, “eat right and work out.” That much is also obvious. The question is how do I go from hella overweight to healthy specifically? What works and what doesn’t work?

Here are the things I know that don’t work:

Assuming I’m going to get enough physical activity during my current average day.

Eating whatever I feel like, consequences be damned.

Not talking to people about my goals.

Not keeping track of how I’m feeling.

Not reaching out to people who have been in my shoes and got out of this lifestyle.

Since I know these things don’t work, I can’t keep doing them. I think, to begin, I should try doing the opposite.

Start pushing myself to get in more activity. I weigh a fricken boatload. I don’t really feel comfortable sharing the exact number right now, but trust me when I say it is higher than any human should weigh. This leads me to believe that jumping into an intense work out regimen would probs be kind of bad for me. I have a FitBit Flex that I wear almost all the time. Spoiler alert: I’m going to be wearing it all the time from now on. I’ve been using it for almost a year and I honestly really like it. It keeps pretty accurate measure of how many steps I take and how well I sleep. The starting step goal on it is 10,000. I’ve hit or exceeded that number exactly 3 times. My goal is to hit 10k steps a day for the next 3 months. If you use FitBit in any capacity, feel free to add me! A requirement for me to do my job is to be sitting pretty much the whole day and the competition is a great motivator.

Using FitBit to get a hold of my lifestyle.

Oh, food, you fickle bitch. I love eating and trying new food and I’m never going to be one of those “clean eating” people. It just isn’t realistic for me. First off, this is America. Also, I live in the Midwest. Third, my neighborhood is off of a stretch of road called Restaurant Row. Great food literally surrounds me in large quantities and I’m not interested in completely letting that go. That being said, keeping on with what I’m doing would just be damn stupid. I have a few strategies that I am going to start implementing to try to curb the ridiculous food habits I have. Most importantly, way way way less eating out. Which brings me to my next point, because I never go out alone.

I need to draft a team. You think I’m the only person in my house who needs to reconsider their lifestyle? No, honey. I need to tell the people around me about the changes that are happening and why they are happening. We all need to be a part of prepping, cooking, and shopping for food. We all need to let me browse through Target/Ikea/The Mall as long as I want so I can get my steps in. Gone are the days of instant gratification. I need them to be there for me when I really want some super delicious deep dish pizza.

Maybe instead of eating my feelings about eating my feelings, I could just blog about it. Like, “Oh man, I couldn’t find a dress to wear and I’m really upset,” instead of eating a doughnut. This cyclical shit is aggravating. I feel a little better just for having written that here. I feel a lot better by having written everything above this sentence. Putting it out there in the world and working out my thoughts here is pretty therapeutic. I know the internet is judgy, but let’s just be better here, ok?

As much as people love to say how fat America is, the truth is that there are a ton of people out there dedicated to fitness and health. Many of those people have been where I am now and have turned their health around. I need those people leaving me tips and being my sherpas through what will hopefully be the most challenging part of my life. Because on those days when you’ve worked so hard for something and you feel like the results aren’t there (and I’ve experienced this) you need the person who worked through it to tell you that not all is in vain.

In my quest to pursue these goals, I’ll be trying a bunch of different stuff and I’ll be posting it all here (and probably some stuff here and some real time stuff here). Do you have suggestions? Have you been where I am now? Talk to me!

Yes, that’s a 30 Rock reference/play on words. I get the impression I’m going to need my sense of humor for this little endeavor. What is it? I’m going to try to bring a little rural into this suburban townhome. I want to be more self sufficient and healthy. Doing things myself has just always been my way (read: stubborn). I have spent my life living in the suburbs of one the nation’s largest cities so I’ve had all the conveniences I could ask for. I used to wonder how people who didn’t live within 15 miles of a Target survived. This is my attempt at figuring that out. So I’ll be chronicling my journey to independence here. You are welcome to revel in my successes and commiserate my losses.

This journey is also partially the result of hearing whispers (sometimes screams) that the progress we’ve made as a human race hasn’t been entirely positive. Things like fluoride in toothpaste or pasteurized milk might not be as good for us as we thought. One of my goals is to find out for myself whether or not these claims are true.

The general idea is becoming more independent and knowledgeable in a few key areas:

Home

Health

Home:

I live in a townhome built in 1976. It has had very few upgrades since then so it’s more than a little rough around the edges. My 4 roommates and I are charged with fixing it up. From wallpaper removal, new flooring and maintenance, we are going to learn to be homeowners.

Health:

Who couldn’t use a healthier lifestyle? Well, we definitely could. I’m going to figure out which habits/foods/products are helpful/harmful. I also want to learn to grow, process, preserve and prepare my own food.

I understand that this is a lot to take on. It will be challenging but hopefully rewarding. I am lucky to have some supportive family and a house full of people just as ignorant as I am to try this stuff out with.